Zulu Hart (18 page)

‘Come in and all will be revealed. Anthony’s here.’

George had yet to meet his rival in love, and could feel his stomach churning as Fanny led him into the drawing room. The bishop was in his favourite armchair by the fire; sitting opposite him, on a chintz sofa, was a middle-aged officer in the dark blue patrol jacket of the Royal Engineers and sporting a quite magnificent moustache. It hung down from his chin by a good four inches, and gave him the distinct look of a walrus.

‘Ah, George,’ said the bishop. ‘Come and meet Colonel Durnford. Anthony, this is the young man I was telling you about.’

As Durnford rose, his useless left arm, the legacy of a spear thrust at Bushman’s River Pass, hung awkwardly at his side. He was much smaller than George, and slightly built, with thinning sandy hair and a delicate, almost feminine face. He shook hands with a grin. ‘So you’re the reason why Fanny hasn’t had the time - or the inclination I’ll be bound - to write more than a couple of letters in the last three months.’

George bristled at this jibe. ‘I hardly think—’

‘Pay him no heed, George,’ said Fanny. ‘He’s just jealous.’

‘I won’t deny it,’ said Durnford. ‘One minute I’m the Bishopstowe favourite; the next I seem to have been supplanted by a youthful Adonis.’

‘What nonsense,’ said
Fanny.
‘I’ve been busy at the mission school, as well you know. And we’ve
all
enjoyed making George’s acquaintance. Isn’t that right, Father?’

‘It is indeed. He’s a kindred spirit, Anthony, and they’re in short supply these days.’

Durnford turned to George. ‘I gather you’re part Zulu and that you’ve offered to intercede with your kinsman Chief Sihayo?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, now might be a good time, because Sir Frere has our report and it wouldn’t do any harm for King Cetshwayo to know its contents. That way he can prepare his response.’

‘Can you give me any details?’

‘I can. This is highly confidential, mind,’ said Durnford, raising a finger. ‘We’re going to recommend a frontier that follows the line of the Blood River.’

George gasped. ‘But that will give virtually the whole of the Disputed Territory to the Zulus.’

‘Not quite. The Boers get to keep the land to the west of the Blood River, ceded by Mpande in fifty-four, but that still leaves many Boer farms on Zulu territory.’

‘What will become of them?’ asked George.

‘They’ll have to leave.’

‘Wonderful news, eh, George?’ said the bishop.

‘Yes,’ said George grudgingly. ‘However did you manage it, Colonel?’

‘I simply argued that there was no legal basis for the Boer claim to much of the Disputed Territory, and Attorney-General Gallwey agreed with me. He’s a lawyer, of course, and requires a high level of proof. John Shepstone was furious, but he couldn’t persuade Gallwey to change his mind.’

‘Good for Gallwey,’ said George. ‘But if, as you say, Bishop, Frere is determined to conquer Zululand, won’t he simply find another pretext?’

‘That may be his intention,’ said the bishop. ‘But he won’t have the support of the British government. I hear on good authority that Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the colonial secretary, is firmly against a war with the Zulus. So good news all round. I think we should celebrate.’

When champagne had been brought, the bishop proposed a toast.
‘To peace!’

‘To peace!’ echoed George as he glanced at Fanny. To his consternation her eyes were firmly fixed on Durnford.

The bishop beckoned George to one side. ‘How soon can you leave for Chief Sihayo’s kraal?’

‘Um …’ said George, still distracted by Fanny’s obvious preference for Durnford.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry. I should be ready in two days. I’ve already bought the trade goods and arranged for the hire of the wagon and oxen. I just need time to load up and I can be on my way.’

‘Good. It should take you about a week to reach the Zulu border at Rorke’s Drift. Sihayo’s kraal is less than a day’s journey beyond that. Once you’ve given the chief the good news, you must impress upon him the vital importance of the Zulus not doing anything to provoke their white neighbours. Frere and Shepstone will be looking for any excuse to ignore the commission’s report, or even amend it, and the Zulus must not give them one. We must, for example, have no repeat of the type of intimidation that caused the mass exodus of missionaries from Zululand in March.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

‘Excellent. Before you go, I’ll give you a letter to take to Sihayo, confirming your bona fides.
Another glass?’

By now the rest of the family had appeared, and more champagne was opened. But, try as he might, George did not feel like celebrating. He was nervous about his forthcoming trip and felt he had been upstaged, even belittled, by Durnford. He was, moreover, far from convinced the threat of war had passed. Eventually he made his excuses, and Fanny saw him to the door.

He descended the steps, stopped and turned round. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course,’ said Fanny, framed in the doorway. Her hair was loose about her
shoulders,
her cheeks flushed pink with champagne. She had never looked lovelier.

‘Are you in love with Colonel Durnford?’

‘What an extraordinary question.’

‘Will you answer it?’

‘I have a high regard for the colonel, as you know.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘I … Wait here.’ She reappeared wearing her bonnet, shut the door and came down the steps. ‘Let’s walk a while.’

They took the path to the left of the house, through a pretty avenue of acacia trees, and sat at a bench with a spectacular view of Table Mountain. For some minutes neither of them spoke. George broke the silence. ‘The reason I ask,’ he said, taking Fanny’s right hand between both of his, ‘is because I think I’m falling in love with you.’

‘But, George, you hardly know me. And you’re so
young.’

‘I’m
eighteen
,’ blurted George. ‘And I’ve seen enough of you, these last months, to know you’re a remarkable woman: intelligent, determined and, above all, a good person.’

‘I’m flattered, George, I really am. And I won’t deny I’ve become very fond of
you.
But I’m nine years your senior, for goodness’ sake, and there are others to consider.’

‘The colonel?’ asked George. ‘Doesn’t he have a wife?’

‘He’s married, if that’s what you mean. But he has no wife. She abandoned him years ago, leaving their daughter to be brought up by the colonel’s family in England. She’s now twenty — older than you!’

‘But what can he offer you while his wife still lives? You can never marry, nor can you be together, even in Natal.’

‘That’s true, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about him.’

George slowly shook his head. ‘So there’s no hope for me?’

Fanny leant forward, took George’s face in both her hands and kissed him on the lips. ‘Look after yourself in Zululand. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

Near Rorke’s Drift, Natal, 27 July 1878

The leather of his saddle creaked as George shifted position for the umpteenth time since leaving his camping ground that morning. His legs ached and the winter sun, though low in the sky, was still hot enough to cause rivulets of sweat to trickle down his back. Up ahead the sandy track rose towards a small saddle, or nek, in the bare rocky hills known as Nostrope Pass. From there, George had been assured, you get your first view not only of the Buffalo River, the border between British Natal and Zululand, but of the Zulu kingdom itself.

He looked back but there was no sign of the loaded wagon and oxen that was providing his cover as a trader. Eager to set eyes on the wedge of territory controlled by his great-uncle, he decided not to wait, and nudged Emperor from a walk to a canter. He had learnt from watching others that no one trots in South Africa; in riding any distance it was best to walk for half an hour, canter for half an hour, and then stop for the same amount of time to let the horse drink and feed off the veldt. That way a horse was never long without sustenance and could cover many miles in a day.

Clouds of dust rose as George breasted the rise and gazed in awe at the spectacle laid out beneath a towering sky. The track fell away sharply, via a number of hairpin bends, to the valley floor, where he could just make out, on a terrace of flat land at the foot of a sizeable hill, two thatched single-storey buildings. Away to the left of the buildings was Rorke’s Drift itself, a shallow ford over the Buffalo River, and, a short way downstream, the punts for ferrying heavy traffic. Beyond the silvery ribbon of water, the track wound its way through ten miles of rising, rocky ground to a distinctive, sphinx-like hill the Zulus called Isandlwana, or ‘Little Hut’, because its peak resembled their traditional beehive dwellings. George knew that somewhere between the river and the hill was located the mountain stronghold of his
kinsman
Chief Sihayo. They were almost there.

It had been quite a trek since their high-spirited departure from Pietermaritzburg twelve days earlier. George had felt like General Custer himself as, mounted on Emperor, he gave the signal for his single-wagon convoy to roll. His driver, a ragged Boer called Snyman, responded with two pistol-like cracks of his long whip, urging his team of eight pairs of oxen forward. There were no reins, and the direction was set by the
voorloper
- team leader - a young African called Samuel who walked beside the lead pair. Slowly but surely the heavily laden wagon lumbered into life. It was long and narrow, eighteen feet by six, with huge iron-rimmed rear wheels and smaller front wheels that turned on a pivoted axle. And it was covered with double canvas, stretched over wooden hoops fastened to the high sides, which reminded George of those prairie schooners of the North American plains he had seen on countless prints.

In theory a team of sixteen oxen could pull a fully laden wagon for six hours a day at a steady three miles an hour over level ground. At that pace George would have covered the hundred or so miles to Rorke’s Drift in just six days. But conditions during the trek were far from ideal. The problems began on day two, when the trek tow snapped and took most of the morning to repair. At the Umroti River, which they reached on day four, the drift was so sandy that they required an extra team, borrowed at great expense, to pull the wagon through. And on day nine, near the tiny settlement of Umsinga, a sudden thunderstorm took just seconds to turn the dry riverbed into a raging torrent, causing them to halt until the water had receded. They had, as a consequence, averaged just eight miles a
day,
and it had occurred to George more than once during the long trek that a British invasion of Zululand, if it ever came to that, would be no easy matter for reasons of logistics alone.

With so much time on his hands, George’s thoughts had turned increasingly to the three women in his life: his mother, Lucy and Fanny. He felt guilty about the first two, having written only once to his mother to tell her he had arrived safely, and not at all to Lucy, the lack of an address providing a convenient excuse for distancing himself from the one person who could implicate him in the shooting of the private detective. And while he thought about Lucy often, fervently hoping she had made something of herself in Cape Town or Kimberley, it was not with the same depth of feeling that he now reserved for Fanny.

He knew his motives for travelling to Zululand were mixed. Yet some nagging questions remained: given his vastly different upbringing, would he have anything in common with his Zulu kin? His first encounter had hardly been propitious. And how would white society in general, with its entrenched views of racial superiority, treat him if it knew he was part African?

Casting such gloomy thoughts to the back of his mind, he spurred Emperor down the switchback track and on towards the tiny settlement near the drift, prettily located in a grove of trees and shrubs. As he approached the building on the right, its chimney and vegetable garden identifying it as the main residence, a short bearded man came out onto the covered veranda. ‘Hello,’ said the man in a thick accent that George took to be German. ‘Can I help you?’

‘My name’s George Hart. I’m heading into Zululand with a wagon of goods to do a spot of… er … trading. You wouldn’t happen to know the location of Chief Sihayo’s kraal, would you?’

‘Of course.
Everyone on the border knows Sihayo. Come inside and I’ll show you on a map. I’m Reverend Otto Witt - of the Swedish Mission Society.’

George dismounted, took off Emperor’s saddle and knee- haltered him so he could graze, and followed Witt into the house. It was simply furnished and spotlessly clean, the one concession to domesticity being the handsome floral wallpaper in the parlour. ‘Take a seat,’ said Witt. ‘My wife will bring you some lemonade.’

George sat on the sofa and gazed out of the window in the direction he had come, hoping to catch sight of Snyman and his wagon as they breasted the hill.

‘Enjoy the view, Mr Hart. That’s one of the few windows in the place. They say the previous owner, Jim Rorke, had an aversion to windows - and internal doors for that matter. This house contains eleven rooms, and six of them can only be accessed from the outside of the building. Strange, but useful if you have small children and want to keep them out of the way. I have three under seven. Do you have children?’